Video card options

Hey all, I've been reading this board for the past several months and actually own an R1 with dual 260's in SLI. I've had a lot of problems with the configuration and then finally got things running the way I like it ... and the house was hit with a power surge that took out all our electronics including at least part of the laptop. Now I get blue-screens, overheating and other quirky issues. So the insurance company is replacing it and I'm going to pay for the difference to make some upgrades.

My question - since I've had such issues with the video cards - which video card setup should I take? The 5870, the dual 4870's or the dual 5870's? I've seen information that the crossfire might not be worth the hassle.

 

What were some of the problems you faced with the SLI configuration before the surge?
Do you play games, etc that would take advantage of a dual-gpu setup?
I hope you bought a surge protector/battery backup

 

I play a few games that probably would like BFBC2 and now SC2 and have been getting back into gaming more, but I mostly use it for homework.

The problems I had before were lockups, blue screens with an error referencing the nvidia video driver - have tried every driver out there and used cleansweep to replace them every time. After the surge, I don't even get that far anymore and have an unopened box of Starcraft waiting on the new machine (really crappy timing).

I aslo had this thing on a surge protector along with my X-box, Wii, 3 tv's and surround sound - all replaced. The surge also took out my Air Conditioner (did I say crappy timing?), fridge and garage door opener (again, crappy timing - had to break into the house). The insurance guy said there were a number of claims in my area from that night.

Mostly I'm wondering if I will have issues from the dual card setups as the nVidia's caused some problems last semmester while I was taking and ended up failing a test because it wouldn't keep from BSOD'ing. If it's not worth the headache, was going to trade out for the SSD's or more ram or something.

 

I like my 5870, but there are some driver issues with it. Though Brian from alienware is assuring us that it will be fixed soon.

What insurance company do you go through? Im looking for an insurance policy to cover my M17x and my other stuff.

 

Your best option for future-proofing is to go with the pair of 5870s. There are some driver issues now (Dell's drivers are old, and the reference drivers have issues), but at least Dell are working on the problem (see here).

If you get a single 5870 it'll work well, and you won't have SLI/Crossfire-related issues with games, but you'll also notice a drop in graphics performance compared to your old system. The pair of 4870s should work well, but some people have reported issues with them using the latest ATi reference drivers, so they may not be a lot better than the 5870s in that regard.

And no matter what graphics card(s) you get, make sure that you get the RGB-LED screen. Your eyes will thank you for it .

 

Allied Insurance - we have our car and house through them and they provided an option (for an additional charge, of course) for coverage for damage to our toys and belongings which is what replaced all of the electronics. They've been pretty good to us so far, but then we never have wrecks, burn down our house or drive with no regards for saftey (that they can prove).

I'll grab the pair of 5870's then - sounds like there's no lesser evil so might as well go for the big bang. For the screen, I was under the impression that unless I was using it to watch dvd's, there wasn't much point in the RGB-LED screen. In your opinion, it's worth the $200 then?

 

please delete this post

 

.........LOL